RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Rebecca Linda Marlene Sprösser, the German citizen expelled from Colombia on Tuesday, July 27, said her visit was for one reason above any other: salsa.
In an interview the young woman gave to journalist Carlos Gútierrez of RTVC a few weeks ago, she said that she had landed in Cali on March 15 because she loved salsa and wanted to learn to dance it.
Sprösser joined an academy but classes were suspended once the National Strike began and the violent days, curfews and chaos took over the capital of Valle. This did not lead the German to leave the country, on the contrary, she joined the protests.
“I wanted to stay 2 weeks because I love salsa, but I fell in love with the people and the way of life so I stayed,” she said at the time. By then, Sprösser was receiving threats as she started to become famous on social networks for her journalistic coverage of the rising frontline movement that stood up to the police with helmets and shields.
“They tell me that I’m talking too much, that I’m interviewing the police and talking about everything happening in the country. I was in those places. I can speak about it because I do not speak about anything that I have not seen with my own eyes,” she said.
The young German woman added that she would not give up joining the protest despite being told “that they are going to make me disappear, that they are going to kill me, that they are going to pass me off as a guerrilla, as a false positive.” But she was emphatic about one thing: “I choose not to be afraid. The worst thing for me is fear.”
The images Sprösser posted began to expose the situation of young people from the First Line in the capital of Valle del Cauca. With videos and photographs, she began to denounce violent acts during the protest and heavy clashes between demonstrators and ESMAD agents.
Threats began to be a constant. In a post on her Facebook account, Sprösser disclosed that she received a call in which she was threatened “for talking too much and for undermining the image of the Colombian government internationally.”
“The Colombian government is going to look for a way to charge me for this damage in any way it can, even if it means killing 100 Germans,” reads the text denounced by the young woman. In her warning, Sprösser also indicated that an anonymous person told her that she was “lost” and that she got “involved with death and that death is already surrounding me.”
“They are hunting me and want to make me disappear, that they are going to take me away and kill me, and that they don’t give a shit what the German embassy says,” she added.
According to her account, in the threat she is warned that “they are going to justify my death as a false positive, as a collaborator of the guerrillas and that they are going to blame the protesters.”
The complaint caused a stir on Facebook and received the support of thousands of users. Some, outraged by the threats, asked Sprösser to return to her home country for her safety and thanked her for her work in reporting what is happening in the streets of Cali.
But her involvement began to grow from there. In an interview with La FM, Rebecca recounted how she met the First Line, after joining their demonstrations several times. One day, they asked her for help to buy equipment and supplies and she answered: “Let’s do it.” After that, “I decided to join the front line,” she said.
“Puerto Resistencia is like my home. I have been there for days and weeks,” she added. She also said that it was not true that illegal armed groups such as the ELN were ever there. “My friends, my partners, they are like my family…. If there is (illegal) money there we never received it.”
She assured that Colombia is a wealthy country, more so than Germany because it has great natural resources, but that there is tremendous inequality in the country. And she shared the story of her best friend in the country, who died of cancer due to lack of medical care. “It was never my plan to be on the front line,” she said. “But these young people have a voice for the first time,” she added.
On Tuesday it was learned that Rebecca had been detained in the capital of Valle del Cauca by Migración Colombia, the entity in charge of surveillance and immigration control, because she arrived on a tourist visa but was not a tourist. She would travel back to her country in the coming hours.
Source: Semana